I think Zodo may be onto something! With no witnesses round, who’s to say Val didn’t get accidentally entombed in ice by foolishly running in front of her Hero at the wrong moment? At least, that is, until they thaw her out & she is surprisingly both alive & able to give witness to the true story!

That’s right! We don’t know if he’s aware of Val’s superheroine ability or not. He’s probably just arrogant, lazy and blase enough to think her abilities don’t matter next to his. If that’s the case, he may very well freeze her and lie about how it happened.

Not only is he callous, viewing his hero license as a ‘do anything I want license’, but he comes across as a witless low ranking officer who has never learned that you ignore your veteran non-coms at your peril.

As for evidence, I’m pretty sure her testimony will count as much as if he actually froze the spraypainter. He was literally in the act when she stopped him. And saving a life takes priority over catching a rogue hero, period.

She could even be wearing a recording device trying to goad him into a confession. Laws vary from place to place, but in some states such recordings are legal and permissible as evidence as long as one party (i.e. Val in this case) knows about the recording. I’m sure the agency has mics and cameras small enough to go unnoticed while still being powerful enough to catch everything.

Not saying if she is or is not, but Michigan is a one party consent state. So only one person has to be aware of the recording. That’s for conversations where the speakers have some expectation of privacy. Things get murkier in public places, were anyone can record just about anything. So if, for example, there was someone lurking about in the shrubbery, they would also be able to record the conversation.

I don’t know, given what we’ve seen of him so far, I doubt he’d be interested enough in his sidekick to bother reading about her, especially since he picked out her costume not knowing or caring that her powers don’t have anything to do with his, she’s just supposed to be “eye candy”.

Don’t tell her I said that, I have enough trouble with real life to have a fictional character after me, too.

Glad to see she went straight for ‘No way I’m letting you kill or try to kill anyone’ and completely not surprised he thinks ‘sidekick’ means ‘minion’ since he thinks and acts as a super-villain of course he expects his partner to be a mindless servile drone. Too bad for him ‘you’re my sidekick’ doesn’t trump obeying the law which is on her side when it comes to stopping a criminal act.

“Actually, no. Being your sidekick means I watch your back, follow procedure, and carry out orders from the Hero Agency (which, by the way, take precedence over any instructions *you* give). Said orders at the moment being “Make sure you don’t attempt murder”.”

Dammit Val youre supposed to be giving him enough rope withwhich to hang himself!This is the opposite of your job at the moment,Erg!At least bug him into assaulting you or something if you cant do what your boss tells you to do.

No part of her job IS to stop him from killing people, she and her boss aren’t so immoral as to let him kill anyone while trying to gather enough evidence to bury him. She also doesn’t have to bug him into assaulting her he’s more than enough out of control to assault her all on his own without provocation.

And again, priorities. Val has hers straight… preventing death or severe injury is more important than catching a bad guy. You are allowed to use your own people as bait, and that is when they are aware and willing. You do not get to use a random spraypaint artist as the bait in a sting.

Looks like someone’s updated the TVTrope Killer Cop with an entry for Shiver already, hopefully we’ll see something like Laser Guided Karma, Karmic Death, Hoist By His Own Petard, or something similar soon.

Actually Nightmask if she keeps doing this and Shiver winds up being not dumb enough to take a swing at her all thats going to happen is that Val will get in trouble for aiding and abetting criminals,Unless he uses his powers in a way that can potentially be fatal to someone/ count as excessive force theres no proof that his attempt to use his powers was unlawful in any way at all.Now if his powers were fire based or the ability to make peoples legs explode id be more on your side but Theres plenty of non fatal ways to ice a fool.

There’s no way she’d be in trouble for aiding and abetting a criminal since she did nothing of the sort and given he declared his intent to completely ice his opponent over he was clearly intending to use them with lethal intent. You’re also completely ignoring the fact that ice is NOT actually that harmless as was demonstrated previously (it took inflicting extra harm on the previous victim to keep him from suffocating to death, because it doesn’t take that many minutes to die from suffocation). Her actions were no different than stopping a partner getting ready to shoot someone in the back who was unarmed and fleeing (something that’s actually a crime even if there are some nuts who think it’s just fine), someone who in this case was guilty of the extremely minor crime of spraying graffiti on a wall.

Agree with Nightmask. Shiver even said that he “had to tell them to take a deep breath”, which gives a good idea of what he was intending to do. “But he may have just been being sarcastic,” one might counter. Based on what Val has personally witnessed of the guy, and that he was visibly charging up to shoot (note the icy bits in the air around his hand), she would have been negligent NOT to do anything. A guy who has a history of using force far in excess of what a situation warrants… no. Val is perfectly in the right to act as she is. Remember… this girl was spraypainting. To use the cop analogy, you do not shoot to kill someone for defacing property. Or shoot to maim. Or shoot at all, because vandalism is pretty close to the bottom of the list of severity when it comes to crimes just about anywhere in America.

@Ragingagnostic Misdemeanors are still crimes, and some have surprisingly hefty penalties, but they aren’t death penalty offenses by even the remotest stretch of one’s imagination: unless you’re a killer cop or in this case a killer super looking for any excuse at all to inflict pain or death. He likely was going to have a good laugh icing the woman up and watching Val be forced to seriously injure another iced up victim of his in order to rescue her since (as we can see) he’s obviously used to the sidekicks where he’s from being slaves who never question let alone act to hinder the licensed super they’re assigned to no matter what crimes he’s committing.

Once again Nightmask you miss the point,If Shiver could only have a kill setting even the agency wouldnt be dumb enough to employ him.This is more along the lines of a cop tackling another cop to the ground cause they whipped out their tazer on a fleeing supect.Still excessive?,Yes of course but ultimately whos going to believe that this hero with no fatalities officially on his record(Thanks to the agency) is a nut who loves abusing his powers in a dangerous fashion?

Heck the only black mark thats officially on record is him Icing someone up who he couldve potentially de-iced and then letting his sidekick beat the shizznit out of the guy with a bat(admittedly to save the guys life but as I said before if I posted a video of Val charging in and battering the crap out of a defenceless black guy online im pretty sure itd be Val getting lynched by the press).

No the only one missing the point is you The passing critic; actually you seem far too interested in defending the guy when his actions are quite indefensible. We have not seen evidence that he can de-ice anything and we know for a fact that he completely iced someone over and when they were suffocating refused to do anything to reverse what he intentionally did forcing his sidekick to injure the person in order to save them from suffocating to death. He then made it clear he was going to do it again to someone guilty of petty vandalism which means Sidekick Girl had EVERY justification in stopping him because that’s her job, to stop criminals not enable them and Shiver’s a criminal and she’s going to be believed because her boss already believes her and knows about what’s been hidden.

Your video example also fails to have any value since Val did not beat up some defenseless black guy she valiantly fought to save his life to free him from a suffocating cocoon of ice when the ‘hero’ she was with if he could have freed the guy refused to do so making her actions essential to save him. Anyone seeing such a video would have been praising her for her actions and denouncing Shiver for the monster that he is.

Oh nightmask you are priceless =).Ive pretty much given up on playing devils advocate for the guy since its become pretty obvious that hes at best a sociopath who knows hes got free licence to do whatever he wants within reason since anyone who fits under the criminal banner is considered fair game.That said I would love to know how he wound up developing this headset in the firstplace.

The problem with your argument is youre operating on inside knowledge which at the same time could very well be incomplete,Its very possible that Shiver could do a wide range of things with his ice powers its just he doesnt want to.Also if you didnt know Val personally would you really have the context to think “Hey that sidekick whos beating the crap out of the defenceless guy while her partner looks on grinning is totally a goodguy!” when you see a video thats the superheroic version of a Rodney king footage.Your entire argument is based on personal knowledge about Val which joe public most likely wouldnt even know.

Val is actually doing her job here. Agent Grey gave Val specific orders to minimize damage and keep him from doing serious harm. Shiver’s comment of taking a deep breath (where the criminal wasn’t close enough to hear) is the thing that would have set off alarm bells for Val. Everything we’ve seen him do involves icing something over completely. He might have more varied ability, but he doesn’t seem inclined to use it. Even when Val stops him in this page, he never tried to explain his plan or indicate that he WASN’T about to ice the criminal. He just became angry and combative that Val is interfering with him. He very well could have had a different plan, but he never showed any sign of it.

Remember, Agent Grey wants things done by the book, which means evidence, paper trails, and repeat offenses. Shiver is not going anywhere anytime soon. LA actually shunted Shiver to Metrocity to get rid of him, even AFTER he killed someone. What Grey’s end goal here is to make Shiver unemployable as a hero for good (and probably put him in jail too). But in order for that to happen, he needs the documentation that will let him revoke his licence.

@The passing critic First off that’s not the gist of my argument and second again no you cannot equate video of Sidekick Girl freeing Shiver’s previous victim from ice with something like the Rodney King assault because again she’s obviously NOT assaulting an innocent person she’s obviously struggling to free someone trapped in ice before they suffocate to death. That’s not reader-insight that’s obvious even from an in-comic perspective. You’ve someone sheathed in ice while someone else is fighting to break the ice on their face so they can breathe, it would take Insane Troll Logic (as per the trope) to try and equate that with something like the Rodney King beating.